| The Only Good Consumer is a Very Dumb Consumer | 3 comments |
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5 Dec 2005 @ 20:37, by Matthew Webb
So far this is only a collection of important quotes and article pieces, plus my poem at the end whose title is;
"The Only Good Consumer is a Very Dumb Consumer".
I will refine it as an article series on spirituality in time, explaining that you can't be a willing part of consumerism, sharing it's values and methods, and still claim to be spiritual. The two can't and never did mix, just as greed and egotism, (the hallmarks of consumerism) cannot effectively function alongside love, clarity and social responsibility. Anyone who says they can is either grossly naive and misinformed, or just plain evil.
To prove this assertion, read the following material which will show you beyond a doubt that materialism/consumerism is indeed evil, and will be the death of most if not all of humanity....
*********
From the CNN article of October 3rd 2003,
Spending Our Way to Disaster
By Justin Lahart
CNN/Money Senior Writer
The consumer debt bubble in the United States could make the stock bubble seem like nothing.
The American consumer has become deeply addicted to spending, running up even higher levels of debt in order to live in a fashion that is beyond his means. And the world has become equally addicted to the consumer continuing to burn through cash.
It’s a dangerous situation—potentially a bubble that dwarfs even the US asset bubble that burst in 2000… The perseverance of consumer spending over the past several years is credited with keeping the economy afloat…
“If there’s a bubble, it’s in this four letter word; Debt,” said Merrill Lynch Chief North American Economist Dave Rosenberg. “The US economy is just awash in it”.
Indeed, consumer credit and mortgage debt are both a higher percentage of disposable income now than they’ve ever been before.
US consumer spending accounts for around 70% of US gross domestic product.
But rather than using such rate reductions as an opportunity to save money, consumers have, as a whole, used them as an opportunity to spend more.
“We’re a what’s-my-monthly-payment nation,” said northern trust chief US economist Paul Kasriel. “The idea is to have my monthly payments as high as I can take. If you cut the interest rates, I’ll get a bigger car.”
US consumer spending accounts for around 20% of world gross domestic product.
But here is another situation where the United States is spending more than it makes. The current account deficit—the gap in the United States’ trade in goods and services with the rest of the world—has risen to about 5% of the total economy.
So the world economy is leveraged to the US consumer. And the US consumer is leveraged to the hilt. There are now more registered cars on the road in the United States then there are licensed drivers.
Clearly something has to give. “Nobody can pinpoint when this process will come to an end,” said Carlos Asilis, a portfolio manager with the hedge fund Vega Capital management. “But it is very clear that it can’t go on forever.”
From the article;
Mechanisms of Inequality
Cash Crops
Although the impoverished nations seldom lack agricultural resources, these resources are rarely used for their won benefit, or even basic needs. Much of the fertile land in Third World countries is used to grow export or “cash crops”, the profits from which do not go to those who toil to; produce them. Coffee, cotton, tea, animal feed, tobacco/sugar, vegetables, fruit, heroin, rape seed, soy, cocoa…the list is endless and is closely linked to the long legacy of colonialism. The farmers and laborers who produce these crops have little or no control over what is grown, or who it is sold to. They are usually paid poverty or even starvation wages and so they remain poor.
“The global consumer society casts a particularly long shadow over forest and soil. El Salvador and Costa Rica, for example, grow export crops such as bananas, coffee and sugar on more than one fifth of their crop land.” From the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, cited by Allan Thein Durning.
Unfair Trade
The prices for global trade are controlled by the rich nations, through the commodity markets, the stock exchanges, international trade agreements, tariffs and quotas…impoverished countries, let alone individuals, do not have the economic leverage to influence these systems to their benefit. Simply opting out is not a practicality- whole social systems are reliant on the import of Western technology, which poor countries lack the industrial infrastructure to manufacture for themselves, because they have been kept poor by unfair trade. Turning their backs on the West has almost always been followed by boycotts and vast international pressure. How then do you re-organize a society to produce for local need unless it can be done overnight? And if it can’t be done overnight, how do you escape from this vicious circle?
Debt
Almost all Third World nations owe money to the rich nations, who enthusiastically and irresponsibly encouraged them to borrow during the 1970’s. interest rates rose dramatically, and as a result, those countries have been left paying interest bills that in many case have now exceeded the value of the original loan. Little of this money reached the poor, (except perhaps in the form of bullets from a dictators internal security forces) but it is now they who are having to pay. Countries unable to meet their debts have had economic structural adjustment programs forced upon them by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, both of which are controlled by, and have their headquarters in, the USA. (ESAP is euphemistic acronym translated by African campaigners as, “Eat Shit and Perish”…) ESAP’s require the debtor nations to “tighten their belts”, and cut back on social and welfare programs, education, healthcare and food subsidies, with disasterous consequences to the poor. Emphasis is then placed on earning foreign exchange for debt repayments by- you guessed it- yet more cash crop production, and the dropping of trade protection barriers.
In 1993, for ever $1 given in aid, rich nations took back three dollars in debt payments” (from the World Development Movement).
The net effect of all this is that economic power flows from the poor to the rich…and we end up in a situation where the richest fifth of the worlds’ population is able to monopolize 83% of its’ wealth, while the poorest fifth is left to subsist on only 1.5%. The gap continues to rise, and the consequences of this appalling situation regularly appear on our TV screen in the form of famine reports, wedged in the middle of adverts telling us that nothing is ever enough.
From the article;
How Should We Then Live
The following were compiled by a Canadian-based group called, “Global Awareness in Action”. They are provided by the Native American Sunbear in his important book; Black Dawn/Bright Day. These statistics date from 1990.
Each Minute
51 acres of tropical rainforest are destroyed
35000 barrels of oil are consumed
50 tons are fertile soil are washed or blown off cropland
12000 tons of carbon dioxide are added to the atmosphere
Each Hour
1692 acres of productive dry land become desert
1800 children die of malnutrition and hunger (15 million per year)
120 million dollars are spent for military expenditures (1 trillion dollars per year)
55 people are poisoned by pesticides; 5 die.
Each Day
230000+ babies are born
25000 people die of water shortage or contamination
10 tons of nuclear waste are generated by 350 nuclear plants
25000 tons of sulfuric acid fall as acid rain in the northern hemisphere
60 tons of plastic packaging and 372 tons of fishing net are dumped into the sea by commercial fishermen
5 species per day become extinct
American Society of Plastic Surgeons reports 2002 statistics
Arlington Heights Illinois-
Nearly 6.6 million people had cosmetic plastic surgery in 2002, according to statistics released today by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, (ASPS)
A Variety of Relevant Quotes by prominent authors, political figures and social revolutionaries;
Consumerism is a term used to describe the effects of equating personal happiness with purchasing material possessions and consumption. Happiness through consumption is largely an illusion, but don’t tell that to the advertising industry. Advertisers spend 200 billion dollars annually…that’s right, $200 billion trying to convince us to buy.
In Canada, advertisers spend an average of $370 a year on every person trying to get them to buy stuff. In the US American consumers get hit with three times that amount.”
It’s no wonder then that by the time the average North American turns 70 years old, they will have spent 3 years of their life, listening to or reading, or watching advertisements—an average of 60 minutes per day”
“Give the public the ‘image’ of what it thinks it ought to be, or what television commercials or glossy magazine ads have convinced us we ought to be, and we will buy more of the product, become closer to the image, and further from reality”
Madeline L. Engle
“Over-consumption is the mother of all environmental problems,” says Kallie Lasn, the founder of the Vancouver based Media Foundation. “For the first time in the history of capitalism, consumption itself has become controversial,” Lasn told Time Magazine in 1997.
“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” Socrates
By some estimates, Graydon says, a young North American may see between 20,000 and 40,000 TV commercials a year and, when all forms of advertising from various media are factored in, as many as 16000 advertisements a day.
It is important to recognize that behind the razzmatazz of consumerism, we all remain dependant on basic natural resources-land, air, water, and biodiversity-for every product and service. There can be no free lunch on the environment.” Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environmental Program.
According to United Nations statistics, the average North American consumes 14 times more than a Mexican and 35 times more than a person living in India does. The UN’s Human Development Reports indicate that 86% of the purchases for personal consumption are made by 20% of the worlds’ population. These reports show that unrestrained consumption broadens the gap between the poor and the rich.
The Dutch National Institute of Public Health and Environmental protection, (RIVM) , which publishes the Annual National Environmental Outlook, says that “the purchase of more and more products makes it impossible to achieve environmental objectives”.
“Our world has enough for each persons’ need, but not for his greed,”
Mahatma Ghandi
“You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.”
Eric Hoffer
“Christmas is a school for consumerism-in it we learn to equate delight with materialism. We celebrate the birth of One who told us to give everything to the poor by giving each other motorized tie racks.”
Bill McKibben
“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.”
Will Rogers
“He who knows that enough is enough will have enough”
Lao Tzu
There are two ways to be rich-one in the abundance of your possessions and the other in the fewness of your wants. “
E. Stanley Jones
“That I live every hour of every day in an environmental crisis I know from all my senses. Why then is not my first duty to reduce, so far as I can, my own consumption?”
Wendell Berry
“Do not accumulate wealth while millions are hungry. Do not take as the aim of your life fame, wealth, or sensual pleasure. Live simply and share time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.”
Thich Naht Hanh
“Human beings in the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental change are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about.”
World Scientists’ warning to humanity, 1992
“The ‘environmental crisis’ has happened because the human household or economy is in conflict at almost every point with the household of nature. We have built our household on the assumption that the natural household is simple and can be simply used. We have assumed increasingly over the last 500 years that nature is merely a supply of ‘raw materials’, and that we may safely possess these material by taking them…and so we will be wrong if we attempt to correct what we perceive as ‘environmental’ problems without correcting the economic over simplification which caused them”.
Wendell Berry
“Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its’ lifestyle.”
Pope John Paul II
“With each passing day, it is becoming increasingly clear that the strategy of environmental exploitation that characterized the 20th century is reaching the end of its’ natural life. We are in the early stages of a transition from an attitude that, in Herman Daly’s felicitous phrase, ‘treats the Earth like a business in liquidation’ to one that is committed to preserving the plants’ natural capital.” The Principle underlying this shift is really quite simple: if we want a high quality of life for ourselves and future generations- a high quality of life in all its’ senses-we cannot continue to degrade the quality opf the natural systems of which we are a part.”
Carl Frankel
“Above all, we should question the consumer ethic, which uses up non-renewable resources, creates inequality and injustice, generates pollution, destroys other species and upsets the balance of nature. The consumer ethic not only defiles the environment by creating undesirable change in the biosphere but also corrupts the mind and body by defining pleasure in terms of ownership and absorption. Waste Itself is a human concept; everything in nature is eventually used. If human beings carry on in their present ways, they will one day be recycled along with the dinosaurs,”
Peter Marshal
“Having more and newer things each year has become not just something we want, but something we need. The idea of more, of increasing wealth, has become the center of our identity and security, and we are caught up by it, as the addict by his drugs.”
Paul Wachtel
“The level of consumption that we identify with success is utterly unsustainable. We’re gobbling up the world.”
John Robbins
“We must convince each generation that they are transient passengers on this planet earth. It does not belong to them. They are not free to doom generations yet unborn, they are not at liberty to erase humanity’s past nor dim its’ future”.
Bernard Lown and Evjueni Chazov
“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect”.
Aldo Leopold
“Since after extinction no one will be present to take responsibility, we have to take full responsibility now”.
Jonathan Schell
“Yet to me it’s always seemed that when you have an economic system whose major tenets are planned obsolescence and conspicuous consumption, which is American climax capitalisms’ major litany, you are basically dealing with an economic system that’s run on a formulae for planetary suicide”.
John Nichols
“Living capital, which has the special capacity to continuously regenerate itself, is ultimately the source of all real wealth. To destroy it for money, a simple number with no intrinsic value, is an act of collective insanity—which make capitalism a mental, as well as physical pathology.”
David Korten
“We must go through a natural revolution if we are to survive on earth. We need to change peoples’ perceptions. If there’s no environment there’s no human race. We are in state of global denial.”
Ted Turner
“The major problems in the world are the result of the differences between the way nature works and the way people think.”
Gregory Bateson
“There are two laws that we had better take to be absolute. The first is that we cannot exempt ourselves from living in this world, then if we wish to live, we cannot exempt ourselves from using the world. If we cannot exempt ourselves from use, then we must deal with the issues raised by use. And so the second law is that if we want to continue living, we cannot exempt use from car.”
Wendell Berry
“In the past, it was possible to destroy a village, a town, a region, even a country. Now it is the whole planet which has come under threat. This fact should compel everyone to face a basic moral consideration; from now on, it is only through a conscious choice and then through deliberate policy, that humanity will survive.”
Pope John Paul II
“A renewal of economic life depends on the conscious choices and commitments of individual believers who practice their faith in the world…we cannot separate what we believe from how we act in the marketplace and in broader community”.
Pastoral Letter on the US Economy, National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington DC
“To create a world in which life can prosper we must replace the values and institutions of capitalism with values and institutions which honor life, serve life’s needs, and restore money as it’s proper role as servant. I believe we are in fact being called to take a step to a new level of species consciousness and function”.
David Koten
“We are forced to choose, for the processes we have initiated in our lifetime cannot continue in the lifetime of our children. Whatever we do either creates the framework for continuing the supreme adventure of life and consciousness on this planet or sets the stage for its’ termination. The choice before us is urgent and important; it can neither be postponed or ignored. “
Ervin Laszlo
From a book by Noam Chomsky entitled;
Manufacturing Consent
“Malls have replaced parks, churches and community gatherings for many who no longer even take the trouble to meet their neighbors or care to know their names. People move frequently as though neighborhoods and cities were products to be tried out like brands of deodorant.
Consumerism sets each person against themselves in an endless quest for the attainment of material things or the imaginary world conjured up and made possible by things yet to be purchased. Weight training, diet centers, breast reduction, breast enhancement, cosmetic surgery, permanent eye make-up, liposuction, collagen injections, these are some examples of people turning themselves into human consumer goods more suited for the “marketplace” than living in a healthy, balanced society.
“Each year an estimated 1.5 million Americans choose to have nose jobs, tummy tucks or breast enlargements. Many of these people would be unable to afford these vital surgical procedures if it were not for the public spirited efforts of loan companies like Jayhawk Acceptance Corporation, a used car lender that has turned to covering the booming demand for elective surgery. Lenders in this field face an unusual challenge”, explains the Wall Street Journal; “a lender can take a used car but can hardly repossess a facelift”. Consequently, lenders like Jayhawk have to charge a slightly higher interest rate, up to 22.5% to be exact, says Michael Smartt, Jayhawks’ CEO, “We’re capitalizing on America’s vanity”.
It is impossible to win a war against yourself or your uncontrolled desires. A good example of this is the simplistic materialist psychosis of the bumper sticker: “he who dies with the most toys wins”.
Is “psychosis” too strong a word to use here? Appreciate the following line of reasoning:
“I can imagine it, therefore I want it. I want it, therefore I should have it. Because I should have it, I need it. Because I need it, I deserve it. Because I deserve it, I will do anything necessary to get it”.
This is the artificial internal drive that the advertisers tap into. You, ‘imagine it’ because they bombard your consciousness with its’ image until you move to step 2, ‘I want it…etc’. This is one of the things which allows people to surrender to consumerism. As a society we have gone from self sufficiency based on our internal common sense of reasonable limits to the ridiculous goal of keeping up with the Jones’ then to stampeding to the lifestyles of the rich and famous, or at least as far as our credit limit allows us to go.
“Sports is another crucial example of the indoctrination system…it offers something for people to pay attention to which is of no importance…it keeps them from worrying about things which matter to their lives that they might have an idea of something about…people have the most exotic information and understand of all sorts of arcane issues…it’s a way of building up irrational attitudes of submission to authority, and group cohesion behind leadership elements, in fact it’s training in irrational jingoism…that’s why energy is devoted to supporting them…and advertisers are willing to pay for them”
The Only Good Consumer is a Very Dumb Consumer
When does the sowing of selfish evil lead,
From endless greed
to makeshift prayers growing,
and owing themselves to a life better lived?
At what point does ignorance plead,
throwing its pride with platitudes flowing
upon the mercy of the Court?
The judgment of Nature shall be made without mercy.
Flaws of modern thought
do compel and mould
That youth ought to do as its’ told,
like us, uncaring.
Yet the fact remains, glaring
regardless of social stature
or facades maintained..
In our madness we imagine,
our honesty strained,
that our own self-made laws
are higher than those of nature.
Neither ignorance nor denial are bliss…
They are both amiss,
They define irrelevance.
Whereas truth does not hang
upon the whim of human conception.
Refusal to understand this,
is the ultimate recipe
for death and destruction.
Here lies the once and glorious
naked ape,
denying wisdom with mouth agape
would-be God and Sage, turned user,
evolutionary loser, spurned and despised
by way of dollar-clad presumption.
Destroyed by ideas of their own invention;
consumerism, materialism, dogma-traditionalism,
nationalism, patriotism, militarism,
and last but not least,
egotism in mad convention.
No value to life but rape,
Red tape, materialists on the take
people as pawns, trees as lumber,
dam the river, drain the lake.
Lies as truth…sincerity faked,
Planet as profit in televised slumber.
Giving nothing, taking all
until the inevitable Fall
Suicidal Empire of rage and lust
Without care, certain that they were better
than all that lived,
Short of sight, calling that fair and just,
did they assume it was their right,
without thought, unable to gauge
where greed would lead,
in a mental cage, a Prozac Hive.
When we are exhumed by alien hands,
in a once and future age,
so the epitaph will read.
Can “consumers” truly claim to give
a defense unknowing,
while yearning for more, ignoring the Rules,
all the universe a tool for personal gain,
deny your brothers’ pain.
Playing victims and fools while Rome burns
While the people fiddle, forests to ashes turn.
Scoffing at the wise, they say;
“It is none of our concern”,
“bother us not with the petty details
of our imminent demise”.
Could it be the saying, “they know not what they do”
is wearing all too thin?
Or is ignorance of the Natural Law in truth
no defense to prosecution?
Our collective deeds, jury and trial,
where death is twin of nature defiled!
Where fame and money are ever the style,
and the higher the cost the better?
Where the mass claim to fame
is to maintain, that there is no truth,
where honesty is considered rude, uncouth,
but is in fact better described,
as the convenience of denial!
Dear consumer,
do you really imagine
that this fickle and folly-whim
called fashion
and brand-name attraction,
to be the meaning of life well lived?
Is this truly “success” or the ultimate failure
of both intelligence and wisdom?
Do you really imagine
this gold plated, cancer-strewn
road you walk,
filled with gossip and idle talk,
leads anywhere
but hype,
and a type of slow agony in pointless effort,
to a poisoned mind, a tortured soul
strolling blindly, without worthwhile goal
into pre-mature death?
Have you not learned this lesson
from the bitter confession of history,
after the procession of centuries of wasted youth
to learn what life is really about?
Or will you continue to pretend, even as you doubt,
to defend your role in humanity’s end,
even with tears in your eyes,
that such a life will last forever?
Have you not noticed that the goals
set for you by your televisions
are filled with pretty lies?
Matthew Webb visionquest@eoni.com
The World Mind Society [link]
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Category: Economics, Financing, Banking
3 comments
7 Dec 2005 @ 16:38 by jazzolog : Let Us Hope
it is not too late. Thank you for this Rishi. Of course all this increasingly may affect only the USA, as more and more cultures distance themselves from us.
8 Dec 2005 @ 00:21 by soultruth : my second plea
There's so much in this article to talk about and yet it goes unnoticed or ignored, just like the article I posted that you wrote, dear Rishi, ("Let's Manifest Together").
Some things that I can't believed are ignored are:
Each Minute
51 acres of tropical rainforest are destroyed
35000 barrels of oil are consumed
50 tons are fertile soil are washed or blown off cropland
12000 tons of carbon dioxide are added to the atmosphere
Each Hour
1692 acres of productive dry land become desert
1800 children die of malnutrition and hunger (15 million per year)
120 million dollars are spent for military expenditures (1 trillion dollars per year)
55 people are poisoned by pesticides; 5 die.
Each Day
230000+ babies are born
25000 people die of water shortage or contamination
10 tons of nuclear waste are generated by 350 nuclear plants
25000 tons of sulfuric acid fall as acid rain in the northern hemisphere
60 tons of plastic packaging and 372 tons of fishing net are dumped into the sea by commercial fishermen
5 species per day become extinct
and this:
"Can “consumers” truly claim to give
a defense unknowing,
while yearning for more, ignoring the Rules,
all the universe a tool for personal gain,
deny your brothers’ pain.
Playing victims and fools while Rome burns
While the people fiddle, forests to ashes turn.
Scoffing at the wise, they say;
“It is none of our concern”,
“bother us not with the petty details
of our imminent demise”.
I left this site because I am appalled, frightened and very sad over the hypocracy and denial of what is and has been said and what is the truth.
Doesn't anyone besides me get it? WE ARE DYING!! This isn't a judgement or negative thought, it's the truth. it's amazing to me that some say i am the young one without wisdom.
14 Dec 2005 @ 18:26 by rishi : I didn't think
this post would get any comments at all, to be honest. So thank you Soultruth for bringing up various points made within it yet again. Of course, such comments are not new on this log. What is disquieting, as you pointed out, is that the majority really couldn't care less...they don't know what to say about the evils of society or consumerism even when the facts are spelled out in detail, and especially when the consumer orgy known as "christmas" is just around the corner. Nobody really cares that the "holidays" (orignally the "Holy Days") such as christmas has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Christ or the teachings of Christ. In fact, such blatant materialsm and half-baked "spirituality" are the direct opposite of what Christ taught, not to mention that they are destorying this world and everyone in it by increasing degrees.
When are people going to stop literally buying into this phoney nonsense called "christmas" which has become nothing more than an excuse for maximum ego indulgence and limitless greed? When are they going to realize that a society based upon such nonsense is nothing but a fraud, and that their participation in it is nothing but shameful obligation and mindless consumption, without meaning or purpose?
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